This will happen more and more, though many will not be as open about their concerns, for fear of retaliation.

I grew up in a time and place where many took great steps to profess that they were the "good" people and to ensure that everyone knew that they appropriately despised the "bad" people (albeit with love). I will not be a part of a return to that.

Because a code of conduct is just a foot in the door. It provides a pretense for people to seize power and start policing others in the community.

That would be only one objection, but as always happens, the rules are not actually what is written, as the OP rightly pointed out.

Another recent example was the Rod Vagg drama in node.js... he became the target of ire for tweeting an article about Neurodiversity and Free Speech. Does that sound like something that should go against any code of conduct that aims to be more welcoming and create diversity? Of course not, unless you subscribe to Social Justice, where everything is a dogwhistle and an opportunity to name and shame others.

The person who was leading this charge was then discovered to have a tirade filled twitter stream full of spiteful and hateful language aimed at white people and men. Which apparently did not violate any CoC.

The hypocrisy is obvious to anyone who digs past the surface, and the fact that well-meaning bystanders are effortlessly recruited into defending this petty and destructive behavior is what makes it so pernicious.

As per his message, it wasn't just the code of conduct. It was also their partnership with Outreachy which he sees as a sexist and racist organization. He doesn't want to contribute code to a project he sees furthering those goals, sounds fair enough.

As far as objecting to CoCs, a lot of people don't like them because they've historically opened the door to non-developers coming in an usurping actual contributing developers and shifting the project focus from something technical to something political.

Yes, you should read up on the Contributor Covenant. The creator of which is notorious for aggressively pushing to get the CoC included into projects and then harassing developers. Here's one of the more famous examples:

Didn't these people also get upset over some projects documentation using "he"? I remember seeing a massive thread about the Issue requesting gender neutral language and the maintainer spiked it. On another note it sure seems like CoC are often weaponized by people who engage in wrong think.

Yet another thread that demonstrates the social justice movement's harmful influence is flagged into invisibility.

Time to cite Fredrik DeBoer I guess:

>“Social justice” is an awkward term for an immensely important project, perhaps the most important project, which is to make the world a more equitable, fair, and compassionate place.

>But the project for social justice has been captured by an elite strata of post-collegiate, digitally-enabled children of privilege, who do not pursue that project as an end, but rather use it as a means with which to compete, socially and professionally, with each other.

>In that use, they value not speech or actions that actually result in a better world, but rather those that result in greater social reward, which in the digital world is obvious and explicit. That means that they prefer engagement that creates a) outrage and b) jokes, rather than engagement that leads to positive change.

>In this disregard for actual political success, they reveal their own privilege, as it’s only the privileged who could ever have so little regard for actual, material progress. As long as they are allowed to co-opt the movement for social justice for their own personal aggrandizement, the world will not improve, not for women, people of color, gay and transgender people, or the poor.

Remember when node.js forked into ayo.js? Well, maybe not, because you weren't allowed to see it:

I saw this on Lobster and wanted to come here to see the comments and found this.

This is really sad. It shouldn't be flagged at all. It's about tech culture, the e-mail is very well written and it brings up valid things we should talk about as a community.

I've had my own posts flagged on Lobster as well, so they're not a bastion by any means.

I know it's their platform and the mods can do what they want, but it still bothers me we're silencing conversation. Meanwhile on platforms like Gab/Voat, you just get insane amounts of bat-shit crazy.

We're losing the moderate people in our society to extreme left/rightness of platforms.

Yep. The extremeness of e.g. The_Donald on reddit is a direct result of how hostile r/politics was to anyone who didn't support Hillary. Sadly, I think the far left actually likes it this way. They want unreasonable boogiemen they can point to and demonize, so their own echo chambers can pretend to be the moderate ones.

I mean, seems like Dr. Lattner (with all due respect) wants to suppress discussion of the CoC, despite the fact that discussion of the CoC is warranted and apparently crucial to retaining talent. The CoC has a direct effect on this very mailing list, so it seems like it would be up for discussion there, if anywhere.

He explicitly--quoted right there in the comment you're responding to--invited a thread dedicated to discussion of the CoC. How from that do you infer that he's trying to suppress discussion of the topic?

These social justice warriors may seem well-meaning, but ultimately they are parasites. Their mission is never-ending and ultimately they overreach and this is the result.

I just want to work with smart people. I don't care what gender they associate themselves with, what color they are, whether there's an equal distribution of any of these characteristics in my department. I just want to do my job and learn from smart people. Why can't it be as simple as that?

I, too, dream of a world where I can work with smart people without regard to their race, sexuality, gender, whatever, but it is naive to think that we are already living in that world.

Like it or not, the entire system is stacked against minorities in ways that aren't even obvious or noticeable from a position of privilege. I work as an engineer in an office of 120 people in the East Bay. There are three black people working in the office. One of them is the receptionist. If we assume that there are no racial differences in technical ability, then the demographics of my office should roughly mirror the demographics of the surrounding community. Oakland is 28% black (according to the 2010 census), meaning in a fair, unbiased system we should have roughly 30-35 black people working in the office. I am sure that no hiring manager has set out to exclude black people from their postings, but there are centuries of history and deeply ingrained biases that have led to a severe under-representation of African-Americans in this industry, same with every other minority.

Until we are truly operating on a level playing field, I am 100% in favour of scholarships based on giving under-represented minorities more opportunities. It is not discrimination to exclude white men from these scholarships. It is recognizing the centuries of privilege we have had and saying that we want give other people the opportunities we have be given simply by existing.

Also not obvious or noticeable from a position of privilege: many, many white men have no opportunities or privilege and thus are discriminated against for simply being the same race and gender as a very thin slice of upperclass society.

While it is true that many white men come from a background where, for any number of reasons, they are not afforded the same opportunities as, say, a white boy from Cupertino, they are still given opportunities and privilege because they were lucky enough to be born a white man. I know this first-hand because I grew up in a rural farming community in Vermont that was more than 95% white and poverty-stricken. Of course, not everyone in my community went to university, but when I did, no one questioned whether I belonged there because I was still a white man. Now that I have a doctorate and work at a big tech company, no one questions whether I belong here either. The same can not be said for a Hispanic or African American man (or even a white woman) who is in my position.

Unfortunately, an inevitable result of AA-type hiring is that everyone--including the candidates themselves--will wonder whether people hired this way are really up to snuff. You can censor, but you can't stop people from reasoning internally.

No, my mother was a teacher and my father a manager at the local hospital. So while we weren't rich, we were definitely not poverty stricken either.

I cannot speak much to the experience of poor white people in the tech community, but, at least anecdotally, I know of two other people I went to high school with who also went into tech. One is still in the industry as far as I know and the other left it a few years ago. (For reference, I am in my early 30s)

Edit: and I can totally affirm that being a white man from a poor family absolutely afforded me more privilege than being a woman or a minority. I can pass as middle class by losing my accent and picking up a nice suit on the cheap.

I'm a white guy who was born into a poor, solo parent family situation. I still had privilege due to my colour. Example: no-one ever looked at me and wondered whether I was going to steal something from their shop just on the basis of my skin colour. When I went to school, no-one discouraged me from high-level achievement or assumed that I should do sports based on my colour (and where I come from, this definitely happens to people)
I'm a little peeved at people dismissing their privilege just because their life wasn't perfect. That's not what privilege means.

I've also had a boss in tech that refused to hire women engineers. And another boss that lied to the state department to get someone here on asylum (who coincidentally was the hardest worker I've met) sent back, because "Mexicans should go back to where they came from". Spoiler, the guy wasn't even Mexican, just brown.

It does when those events and the decades that followed have prevented minorities from having the opportunities to become a good engineer. This isn't about you and I not recognizing talent in front of us, it's about giving that talent a chance to stand in front of, and ideally next to, us.

>It does when those events and the decades that followed have prevented minorities from having the opportunities to become a good engineer. This isn't about you and I not recognizing talent in front of us, it's about giving that talent a chance to stand in front of, and ideally next to, us.

Oh please. For decades, in the US, there have been programs designed to attract women and minorities to engineering and tech careers. I am of the opinion* that in 2018, women or minorities who are are not in tech, are not in tech because of choices they freely made. Any remnants of discrimination are negligible compared to the advantages that have been heaped upon them.

*I'm sure many disagree with the opinion expressed above, and that's OK. I'm sure many also agree with it. But I would bet that holy hell would break loose if I were to express that opinion in a discussion forum of a FOSS project that has been co-opted by the SJW scolds. And your opinion, which I was responding to, would be permitted.

It's an opinion that makes it very hard to work with you, if I were a woman or minority. I wouldn't want you to review my code, wondering if you think I'm competent or if I'm an entitled person benefiting from unfair "advantages that have been heaped upon" me.

>It's an opinion that makes it very hard to work with you, if I were a woman or minority. I wouldn't want you to review my code, wondering if you think I'm competent or if I'm an entitled person benefiting from unfair "advantages that have been heaped upon" me.

So you're assuming because of my opinion, I would not treat you fairly?

Of course! Anyone who deviates from the SJW line is de facto a bad person! There's no need for logic and reasoning when you deal with people like me! Just cast aspersions on my character and signal your virtue to the rest of your tribe!

You've broken the HN guidelines several times in this thread, but egregiously here. You're not assuming good faith, are name-calling, and are not responding to the strongest plausible interpretation of what the other person said. Could you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and abide by them?

It's bad enough that the community is as divided as it is around these issues. Users need to respect the rules for HN to survive as a place for thoughtful discussion.

I regret answering. If you're not going to engage in good faith, but instead go on some tired diatribe about tribalism, then what hope do we have for understanding each other? You claim that you want to have a discussion, but then you strawman me like that. The irony of you complaining about "tribes" while you label everyone who disagrees with you an SJW...

EDIT:

> So you're assuming because of my opinion, I would not treat you fairly?

I'm assuming because of your opinion that you might misjudge me as a token minority, underserving of my position, perhaps because you catch me on an off day, or because you judge me to be an SJW because of the way I act. You're only human, and we all are susceptible to misjudgment, stereotyping, etc. It's just the human condition.

> Anyone who deviates from the SJW line is de facto a bad person!

To be clear, I didn't respond to you because I think you're a bad person, because I don't, and I don't know you. I responded because I have some vague hope that mutual understanding can be had on the internet through discussion. But responses like this make me feel like a fool for having hope.

Special treatment of some group always (almost always, children and some other groups are treated differently and it feels OK) triggers the feeling of unfairness and raises concerns about objectivity of testing process.

> You're only human, and we all are susceptible to misjudgment, stereotyping, etc.

Yes, double-blind trials were invented to prevent an experimenter from nudging results in a desired direction. In the case of increasing diversity, the desired direction is explicitly specified and encouraged.

Someone, on their personal twitter account, made a remark that Coraline Ada Ehmke found offensive. Coraline noticed that he was a contributor to the Opal project. So Coraline opened an issue on the project, called him an ugly name, and petitioned to have him removed from the project.

I will not quietly submit to bossy bullies like Coraline Ada Ehmke, and I will defend the victims of Coraline Ada Ehmke.

You seem incapable of discussing the issues without trying to hold me accountable for people that I have nothing to do with. You talk about disliking tribalism, but you can’t discuss with me without going off topic and trying to make me accountable for people I haven’t mentioned. Do you not see how you’re behaving in a tribalistic way now?

>You seem incapable of discussing the issues without trying to hold me accountable for people that I have nothing to do with.

Hold you accountable... how? I asked if you agree or not with those actions. Or, like me, do you find them reprehensible? It's very relevant to FOSS project CoCs, which is what this post is mainly about.

>You talk about disliking tribalism,

Uh, I made reference to you signalling to your tribe, but you should not assume from that that I dislike tribalism.

>Do you not see how you’re behaving in a tribalistic way now?

Not really, but if I am, I'm not embarrassed by it.

Do you think the referenced actions of Coraline Ada Ehmke were proper in the context of an open source project? If you do, I won't "hold you accountable" for those actions, whatever that means. My purpose in bringing it into the discussion is to illustrate what these CoCs are really about. They're about defining which political opinions will be permitted to be expressed, and which ones will bring wrath down on the heads of those expressing them.

Laws were passed then, that doesn't mean culture changed over night. Someone born around 1964 is right around the age of parents in their prime development years. Did your parents have no effect on your ability to become educated that put you on track to become a developer?

> Whatever the root cause, the predominance of white males (of which I am one) in tech shows that there is a lack of representation of various groups. This ought to be blindingly obvious

What I am well and truly fed up with is the implication that it is pernicious behavior on the part of white males that is responsible for this state of affairs. And that's not necessarily relevant to this particular SJW dustup, but in general it is what's implied, when it's not stated explicitly (as it often is).

I agree that that sometimes happens, and I agree that it is not okay when that happens. However, I really think we need to guard against reasoning along the lines of "sometimes people are overzealous with identity politics therefore lets oppose all attempts at dealing with injustice".
The problem with a lot of these debates is the extreme polarisation that often occurs. We need to keep minds open and not stop thinking just because some actors in the debates are jerks

Not in the decades I have been observing this industry through my participation in it. In my observation, these past few decades the efforts to increase female and minority employment have far outweighed the rare instances of discrimination I've seen.

> Even today, there are pockets of white males who are virulently against anyone but them having access to their little clubhouses (cf GG for one prime example.)

If they're a "prime example", then why do I have no clue who you're talking about?

It sounds like he's talking about GamerGate. Which, since they followed the old tech idea of race and gender not even being brought up in their ranks, indicates his opinion on most matters social justice.

What's not so obvious is why that's a bad thing. Considering the fact that millions (possibly billions at this point) have been spent recruiting non-whites and non-males in tech, there's no lack of equality of opportunity here.

This breaks the site guidelines. Could you please do a better job of following them? "Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive," and this is a divisive topic.

It's the reasonable default assumption as long as you have no evidence for the opposite (i.e. that white people have racial attributes making them better at tech / non-white people have racial attributes making them worse). Can you provide evidence for the opposite?

I got your point, but I think that the problem is not "helping" (with scholarships) based on membership with minorities, but helping when there are bad economic or social conditions. This may be correlated with other attributes yes but I think that we must write rules for persons by only considering the factors that effectively prevent them from studying and not the skin color.

If you agree that there are hidden mechanisms that shape the inequality, then claiming that “only considering the factors that effectively prevent studying” is fair would require a great deal of certainty in knowing these factors. I don't know how effective “positive-discrimination” is in practice but to me it seems that its principle is to do what you say but with discriminatory features as a proxy heuristic for these “effective features” (this makes sense if you believe they are sufficiently immesurable IRL).

"Centuries of privilege" is the kind of idiocy only a sheltered American suburbanite could come up with.

A century ago millions of young white men were too busy dying in trenches and being gassed to death with mustard gas in a war none of them could vote on.

Children worked on the field, in factories, and in coal mines, like their fathers were expected to.

And yes, women stayed home and took care of the kids because without electricity, plumbing, appliances, refrigeration and cheap groceries, that was actually a laborious full time job, and people were poor. Not to mention that getting through child birth and infant mortality was a blessing for both mother and child.

None of them were given opportunities simply by existing. On the other hand, providing scholarships to specific ethnicities, or creating special women-only pathways to entry, that is exactly that.

What people like Damore have tried to point out is that expecting demographics and sentiment within a field to match the general population, or else the "playing field" is not level, is an unwarranted assumption. It also puts the blame for actually society wide issues on a small group of people who had nothing to do with it.

If you want more black people in tech, start by addressing the way the US school system is stratified entirely by social class. Maybe you'll see a difference, and maybe that IQ gap will shrink. Maybe it won't, and what new "leveling" policies will you want to introduce then? Don't push out or disadvantage others out of misplaced revenge, and don't cite your American tunnel vision as justification.

While I don't care about people's race, skin colour, sexual orientation, 'gender', religion, political affiliation, book preference or shoe size...

...I most emphatically do care about them not bringing up any of these characteristics in any context where they see fit. Just like a country with freedom of religion should support freedom from religion the same goes for freedom from politics, 'gender' issues, race discussions, political diatribe et al. There are laws against discrimination on many - but not all - of these issues which can be used to get those who insist on breaking them back in line or out of the context. If these laws are insufficient there are channels to discuss these issues and ways to get them amended.

In simple terms I think we - as in the society which I was born and raised in (in the Netherlands) and currently live in (Sweden) - have gone a long way in eradicating discrimination on many of the mentioned grounds and marginalising those who insist on violating relevant laws. Both Sweden and the Netherlands belong to the most egalitarian and open societies in the world where 'diversity' has been a mantra for many decades. Things were starting to look good, hardly anyone cared about whether the teacher at school had a different skin colour or shared her bed with a same-sex partner or prayed to whatever deity of choice. And then...

...and then...

And then identity politics suddenly raised its ugly head, driven by people who insist they 'represent' 'marginalised minorities' - without asking those supposedly marginalised minorities whether they felt the need to be represented in any way - and starting calling anyone who did not abide by their 'demands' all sorts of things - racist, xenophobe, misogynist, white cis-gender male expletive_deleted, etcetera.

What the said they wanted to do was 'end discrimination and further diversity'. What they are doing is building enclaves and segregating the population among all those characteristics which our societies previously tried to make irrelevant.

All those labels they try to stick on their opponents reflect back on what they themselves are: they are the racists by trying to split the population along (real or imaginary) 'racial' lines. They are the xenophobes by loudly denouncing anyone who does not kowtow to their all demands. They are the enemies of diversity by inciting strive between 'racialised' groups.

It sounds like you're angry because you want the autonomy to choose not to think about social justice issues (at least at work), and you feel like that choice is being taken away from you by people who enact things like codes of conduct. Now it's institutionally everyone's responsibility to think about these things, so if I want to be part of this institution, I no longer have this choice.

Is that right?

What do you think about people who say, I'm a woman, and/or I'm black, and/or I'm gay, and/or I'm trans, and/or I'm disabled, and/or I have a mental illness. I also just want to sit heads-down and code next to you and not think about what I "am", but unfortunately -- perhaps, invisibly to you -- people are doing things which prevent me from being able to do that. A code of conduct moves us a bit closer towards "equality of having to think about social justice", in that I have to think about it a bit less, in exchange for your thinking about it a bit more.

>What do you think about people who say, I'm a woman, and/or I'm black, and/or I'm gay, and/or I'm trans, and/or I'm disabled, and/or I have a mental illness. I also just want to sit heads-down and code next to you and not think about what I "am", but unfortunately -- perhaps, invisibly to you -- people are doing things which prevent me from being able to do that. A code of conduct moves us a bit closer towards "equality of having to think about social justice", in that I have to think about it a bit less, in exchange for your thinking about it a bit more.

What do I think about those people? I think they're insufferably bossy people who insult me by telling me what I need to think about more.

> So, you're happy if people get discriminated against but not for those people to ask you to think about it?

This is a typical SJW non-argument, built atop a non-sequitur. Implying that I'm happy that people get discriminated against, while offering no logic to back it up. I disagree with you, therefore I am a bad person with bad motives. And that's what's driving this whole SJW-CoC movement.

The post you were responding to asked "what if I am being discriminated against? what do you say to me?"
You respond that you find them bossy and insufferable.
Unless those observations are inaccurate I struggle to see how you take issue with the question I asked. It certainly sounds from your own words that you do not care about people being discriminated against.

>The post you were responding to asked "what if I am being discriminated against? what do you say to me?" You respond that you find them bossy and insufferable. Unless those observations are inaccurate I struggle to see how you take issue with the question I asked.

I don't take issue with it. I responded with the answer it merited.

>It certainly sounds from your own words that you do not care about people being discriminated against.

Uh, no. I have not seen any evidence to support that discrimination against women or minorities in tech is pervasive. Quite the opposite, in fact. People keep making that claim, however, expecting it to be uncritically accepted at face value. And those who don't, well, they must just be one of those bad people who are happy to see people get discriminated against.

If somebody finds any of the below to be objectionable and refuses to abide by it, I would not be comfortable attending a conference with that person or being forced to interact them for e.g. code review purposes. His departure is regrettable, but it is for the best that he's chosen to remove himself from the project if he can't bring himself to abide by it.

> Be friendly and patient.

> Be welcoming. We strive to be a community that welcomes and supports people of all backgrounds and identities. This includes, but is not limited to members of any race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, colour, immigration status, social and economic class, educational level, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, size, family status, political belief, religion or lack thereof, and mental and physical ability.

> Be considerate. Your work will be used by other people, and you in turn will depend on the work of others. Any decision you take will affect users and colleagues, and you should take those consequences into account. Remember that we’re a world-wide community, so you might not be communicating in someone else’s primary language.

> Be respectful. Not all of us will agree all the time, but disagreement is no excuse for poor behavior and poor manners. We might all experience some frustration now and then, but we cannot allow that frustration to turn into a personal attack. It’s important to remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one. Members of the LLVM community should be respectful when dealing with other members as well as with people outside the LLVM community.

> Be careful in the words that you choose and be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other participants. Harassment and other exclusionary behavior aren’t acceptable. This includes, but is not limited to:

> In general, if someone asks you to stop, then stop. Persisting in such behavior after being asked to stop is considered harassment.

> When we disagree, try to understand why. Disagreements, both social and technical, happen all the time and LLVM is no exception. It is important that we resolve disagreements and differing views constructively. Remember that we’re different. The strength of LLVM comes from its varied community, people from a wide range of backgrounds. Different people have different perspectives on issues. Being unable to understand why someone holds a viewpoint doesn’t mean that they’re wrong. Don’t forget that it is human to err and blaming each other doesn’t get us anywhere. Instead, focus on helping to resolve issues and learning from mistakes.

>If somebody finds any of the below to be objectionable and refuses to abide by it, I would not be comfortable attending a conference with that person or being forced to interact them for e.g. code review purposes.

Not me. I would perfectly comfortable interacting with such a person, because I'm a mature, professional adult who is not a fragile child that needs to be treated like a kindergartner. I will go out of my to not work with the adult babies who think the world should revolve around them, and have to politicize every aspect of life.

This part is meaningless:

> Posting sexually explicit or violent material.

because virtually everyone would agree that's not appropriate. You don't need a CoC for that. The entire purpose of these CoC's is to get people to do this:

The community change I cannot take is how the social injustice
movement has permeated it. When I joined llvm no one asked or cared
about my religion or political view. We all seemed committed to just
writing a good compiler framework.

This comment made me think that someone had disparaged them for their political beliefs or religion, but after reading that doesn't seem to have happened, unless they left it out for some reason, but that would be odd. In fact, if I understand the letter correctly, the straw that broke OP's back was this:

To which I say... really? Ok, that's too bad that you don't want to be a contributor anymore because there is a diversity scholarship... somehow I don't see that as a long term problem for LLVM though.

I look at it more holistically. Men are not underrepresented in the industry and open source community. Neither are the various races not addressed by this particular scholarship. There are other programs you can apply for to get paid to work on LLVM or other open source projects, such as Google Summer of Code. I don't see how this program could actually have a detrimental effect on anyone, let alone a racist or sexist one.

My issue is that the scholarship lumps all the Asian groups together, as if Indians or Chinese have the same language, culture and representation in technology as Hmong or Cambodians. It just plays into racial stereotypes[1] in America.

If the courses are run specifically for a group of people, based on their attributes, this subjects them to bias before they even walk in the door.

One way that this sort of sexist/racist approach could be detrimental is if it's served by one, or few, organisations, the courses could accidentally (or, in extremis, purposefully) be using methods that cause entrenchment of existing partitions between different groups of people. Perhaps one set of courses teaches in a certain innocent manner, and the minorities that consume the course therefore learn in a particular way, or leave out key issues.

There's also the possibility of being indoctrinated against those groups that are not welcomed; again, not necessarily on purpose - I don't intend to demonise such organisations.

Somewhat analogous to recent machine learning/algorithms being found to be prejudiced as their programmers may be unknowingly prejudiced - e.g. facial recognition working poorly for faces of people with dark skin.

Pretending that racism and sexism don't exist and never existed is a nonsensical stance to take and is usually a stance taken by someone who feels that they never have to worry about them. Programs like AA exist because it still is a problem. There are still a lot of people in power with those disgusting ideas. When it was argued that voting rights act was antiquated because racism was no longer a major issue, North Carolina's government went and gerrymandered their state to group black people together and give them less power[1]

Programs like that are out reach to help people that have been looked over or would have been discriminated against out right in the past. They're there to help people, not to punish anyone.

There was a comment in the previous thread suggesting that the diversity scholarship was sexist and racist. In a world where racism and sexism were absent, then a scholarship directed towards a particular gender or race would be racist or sexist. I believe the point of the original poster is that to label the scholarship as racist or sexist is to assume that we live in a world with racial/gender/ethnic equality.

Nope. People have publicly declared that out of fear of the social justice movement they will ban people, refuse to communicate as soon as disagreement with the prevailing political view manifests.

That's what's in the CoC that's objectionable.

> made me think that someone had disparaged them for their political beliefs

Funny how you do that in a post that disparages him for his political beliefs. But your post is nothing compared with the attacks elsewhere in this thread. Scroll down and read a bit, and you'll see plenty of that happening.

Before you say "but it's not about excluding people", let me remind you about James Damore and Brendan Eich. Those were valuable people, attacked and damaged because of their (in Damore's case PERCEIVED, not real) political beliefs. We all know that the majority of Hacker News supported those actions (although how many supported them because they were afraid to be attacked, and how many actually supported those actions is not clear).

And why do people do this ? Attack others for political reasons ? Most, of course, because they're afraid of SJWs. Because of what happened to Damore and Eich and many others. But SJWs, ostensibly, do this for tolerance of course ! THAT's why they're EXCLUDING people for their political views. For tolerance.

Alaternative view: the SJWs are just socialites looking to exclude others, that's all. Aggressive and ... not interested in the only thing that matters : technically interesting work.

> Before you say "but it's not about excluding people", let me remind you about James Damore and Brendan Eich.

Bingo.

James Damore may be the tipping point where people start pushing back against this bullshit. To me, he's Galileo to Google's Catholic Church. He's the heretic that dared to defy the high priests of PC, and he got put on the rack for it.

> Damore and Eich...THAT's why they're EXCLUDING people for their political views

The actual exclusion can be seen by walking around the engineering departments of FAANG companies (or Market Street startups) and seeing virtually all male, white or Asian faces. One in eight Americans are black - where are they? That is the real exclusion. Damore was fired for effectively boasting about this exclusion.

It's illustrative that you ignore the massive exclusion of blacks and others from non-sweeping, non-cafeteria server jobs, and get ALL CAPS semi-hysterical that those who are dumb enough to align themselves with these exclusions and subjugations are the victims and excluded ones.

You are wrong. Race is mentioned multiple times in Damore's memo, such as "At Google, we talk so much about unconscious bias as it applies to race and gender, but we rarely discuss our moral biases", etc.

You call it ridiculous, I see it as the beginning of a movement to make open source project contributions invite only.

The drive for “inclusion” is turning cancerous. “Social justice bikeshedding”. I’m pro social tolerance, but it’s coming off the rails in the tech world, with active discrimination explained away as progress.

Well, it really just shows a pernicious, probably purposeful misunderstanding of discrimination.

Some discrimination is good. Children shouldn't be able to drive cars. Blind people shouldn't be allowed to fly planes. Adults are not allowed to compete in junior boxing leagues.

Most people know this. Most people can also distinguish between this, and the systematic violence, physical and social, that society conducts against marginalized groups.

Racists often pretend to think that racial discrimination is akin to the normal kind of discrimination, for two reasons. First, it's so they can imply that racial discrimination is kind of small beer. Second, it's so they can use normal forms of discrimination as dogwhistles.

I don't know if the poster is a racist. He's probably just an idiot. I think a lot of people who are ordinarily intelligent get attached to formal definitions that are deceptive.

Different people have different interpretations of support. Does it mean you support people even when you disagree with them or do you support their beliefs?

I've been doing tech conferences for a long time. I initially learned how to do tech conferences without things outside the tech being part of the conference. This kept the focus on the tech and including people into that

Seriously? LLVM supporting minorities means that you have to leave? I cannot fathom how trying to be inclusive should matter to anyone - it does not diminish you in any way to offer a hand up to others. I work in games. I have never been to GDC or PAX while I have seen many women get funding to go there on the basis of being a female in games. That isn't an attack on me personally - it's an attempt to work against historical inertia. And it's great. My industry needs to change and we are better for having a broader range of voices heard. If this guy thinks that helping others is such a burden, then really, I struggle to muster any sympathy for him.

Personally, I will surely quit from a firm adopting racist or discriminating policy, it's not about being forced to but it's about fighting dangerous behaviours. Furthermore the guy has not left cause the 'support to minorities trend' but has left cause the disguised 'racist and discriminating trend' of the LLVM project.

> LLVM supporting minorities means that you have to leave
What a terrible misrepresentation of his position.

Outreachy is a racist and sexist organization that excludes people based on their gender and ancestry. Anyone with a shred of self-awareness and moral fortitude should be proud to disassociate with them, and with anyone who chooses to associate with them.